Primary Briefing: Florida, Arizona And Oklahoma

Kelli Ward, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, in Paulden, Arizona.

Caitlin O'Hara / Bloomberg

It’s the Spring Training Primary! Six months after pitchers and catchers first reported to pre-season MLB training camps in Arizona and Florida, local fans report to their polling places on Tuesday to decide some of the most crackerjack primaries of the year. In addition, several Oklahoma primaries that went into extra innings after June 26 will be decided in runoffs. It’s the last big primary night of the year; play ball!

As for Congress, it might be easier to list the districts that aren’t featuring competitive primaries on Tuesday. Here are the most interesting races, grouped thematically to make it easy (or at least less hard) to wrap your head around them. First, the endangered Democratic incumbents:

In the 9th District, former Rep. Alan Grayson is trying to reclaim the seat he left behind to run for U.S. Senate in 2016. Grayson’s strategy: run to current Rep. Darren Soto’s left. However, Grayson’s reputation as a fiery progressive has been doused by ethics questions and spousal-abuse allegations, and Soto is Florida’s first Puerto Rican congressman in a heavily Puerto Rican district. The exceptionally ugly contest has seen Grayson attack Soto for being ineffective, while Soto has slammed Grayson for his “shady” overseas business dealings. Soto leads Grayson 45 percent to 38 percent in one poll of the race. According to FiveThirtyEight’s partisan lean metric,2 the 9th District is 8 percentage points more Democratic-leaning than the nation as a whole, so even Grayson’s flaws are probably not enough to put the seat in play for Republicans this year, but he may have trouble in a less favorable environment.

Meanwhile, in the 5th District (a D+21 partisan lean), Jacksonville will attempt to win back the congressional influence it “lost” when Rep. Al Lawson, who lives in Tallahassee, defeated a Jacksonville-based incumbent in 2016.3 Former Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown initially looked like a strong candidate to return to the seat to the hands of a Jacksonville resident, but despite a Lawson mini-gaffe when he applauded Trump during the State of the Union, Brown remains around 20 points behind the incumbent in polls.

Then, the flippable open seats:

Miami’s 27th District is a longtime Republican stronghold that, according to our model, is very likely to flip to Democrats this year (its partisan lean is D+10). Donna Shalala, the former president of both the University of Miami and the Clinton Foundation, leads the Democratic primary even in her opponents’ internal polls. But former state Rep. David Richardson has raised more money and is dusting off the Sanders playbook, attacking Shalala for her opposition to single-payer health care and service on corporate boards. Republicans struggled to recruit a strong candidate, but the smart money in that race is on TV anchor Maria Elvira Salazar defeating, among others, former Miami-Dade Commissioner Bruno Barreiro (who raised just $50 in the last reporting period) and Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera, best known for allegedly being abducted by aliens at the age of 7. As a Cuban-American woman, just like retiring GOP Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Salazar is probably the candidate swing voters would be most comfortable with in November.

Two self-funding veterans are the front-runners in the Republican primary to replace DeSantis in Florida’s 6th District (R+18), and the fighting has been fierce. Former Army Green Beret Mike Waltz and former Navy officer John Ward have slugged each other for opposing Trump while hugging him tightly themselves. The latest St. Pete Polls survey shows Waltz leading Ward 40 percent to 21 percent, with 16 percent for former state Rep. Fred Costello, who’s raised about a quarter as much money as the top two Republicans. The winner will almost certainly face Nancy Soderberg, a former national security staffer for President Bill Clinton whom Democrats are excited about; she’s raised $1.7 million, and our forecast gives her a 2 in 9 chance against Waltz in November.

The 17th District (R+28) is more solidly Republican, and state Sen. Greg Steube and state Rep. Julio Gonzalez are both rock-ribbed conservatives, but the primary has become a proxy war between several GOP-linked interest groups. The business-friendly U.S. Chamber of Commerce is behind Gonzalez, while the NRA backs Steube, who is known for his zealous support of gun rights. Most notably, the fastidiously anti-tax Club for Growth has stuck their neck out for Steube to the tune of almost half a million dollars. Steube leads Gonzalez 39 percent to 16 percent in a Club-sponsored poll, a credible result given all the outside money supporting Steube.

Finally, the primaries for the right to enter an uphill battle with a formidable incumbent in November:

In the 7th District (R+0.1), businessman Scott Sturgill has outraised, outspent and out-self-funded state Rep. Mike Miller, but Miller owned a 16-point lead in a recent poll. Miller has been a sharp Trump critic in the past but has since come around to supporting the president, while Sturgill boasts endorsements from Roger Stone and the group Bikers for Trump. Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy is heavily favored over Miller in our model and would probably also wipe the floor with Sturgill.

Republican Rep. Brian Mast is likewise given a great chance to be re-elected to the 18th District (R+12), but two Democrats are hoping against hope: former Obama State Department official Lauren Baer is the pick of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, but Navy veteran Pam Keith has raised a credible $540,000 to keep herself in the race.

Oklahoma

All eyes are on the Republican runoff for governor, which could determine if Democrats have a shot at this office in the fall. Multiple polls suggest that Drew Edmondson, who comfortably won the Democratic nomination outright in June, would start out with a lead over businessman Kevin Stitt but tie or trail former Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett. Cornett led Stitt 29 percent to 24 percent in Round 1, but Stitt has used his personal wealth to outraise his rival $2.8 million to $1.3 million since the primary. Polls give Stitt a 9- or 10-point lead in a race that has devolved into a war of attack ads. (Cornett’s unofficial campaign slogan? “Bull Stitt.”)

Several congressional races also went to runoffs, but we’ll focus on two of them. In the Republican runoff for the 1st District, an R+28 open seat, another wealthy businessman, Kevin Hern, has spent $1.5 million of his own money in an effort to close the gap with June’s first-place finisher, former Tulsa County District Attorney Tim Harris. And the 5th District (R+13) Democratic runoff should be an easy victory for former political staffer Kendra Horn over retired professor Tom Guild; Horn has a far more sophisticated campaign operation and trounced Guild in the first round 44 percent to 18 percent. Our House forecast sees Horn as a strong enough candidate to make GOP Rep. Steve Russell sweat.

Arizona’s governor race gets a lot less ink, but the Republican Governors Association is worried enough that it’s spent $9.2 million here already — almost all on ads attacking Democrat David Garcia. Garcia does comfortably lead state Sen. Steve Farley in polls of the Democratic primary, but Farley has slightly outraised and outspent Garcia, so it’s not a done deal yet. Garcia is a strong candidate for Democrats: His 2014 campaign for state superintendent of public instruction was the closest any Arizona Democrat has gotten to winning statewide office since 2006, and his Hispanic heritage may help turn out that crucial segment of the Democratic base. His background as an educator also contrasts favorably with Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who clashed with striking teachers staging high-profile protests in the Arizona Capitol earlier this year. Ducey himself faces a primary challenge from former Secretary of State Ken Bennett, whom he defeated in the Republican primary four years ago, but Bennett appears to be running a shoestring campaign this time around.

And finally, each party will choose its challenger in Arizona’s two most evenly divided congressional districts. Retired Air Force officer Wendy Rogers is verging on perennial candidate status at this point,4 but her avowed loyalty to Trump seems to be keeping her in the Republican primary race for Arizona’s Democrat-held 1st District (R+6). Her rivals are state Sen. Steve Smith, who hails from the Freedom Caucus wing of the party, and farmer/attorney Tiffany Shedd. In the Tucson-based 2nd District (R+1) — an open GOP seat thanks to McSally’s Senate run — the national Democratic Party is solidly behind Ann Kirkpatrick, who until 2017 was the U.S. representative from Arizona’s 1st District. However, her moderate voting record and weak ties to the district haven’t sat well with former state Rep. Matt Heinz, who is running as a full-throated progressive. Kirkpatrick is likely the strongest play for Democrats: She has raised nearly $2 million and won three out of four general elections in a Republican-leaning House district (her only loss came in the Republican wave of 2010), while Heinz lost his 2016 bid for this seat to McSally by 14 points. Some Democrats are worried that the bilious and expensive primary will weaken their eventual nominee in his or her likely November bout with Republican Lea Marquez Peterson, the CEO of the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Footnotes

Trump had given DeSantis his de facto endorsement back in December, but even political junkies aren’t paying that close attention to primaries around the holidays.

The average difference between how a state or district votes and how the country votes overall. In our new and improved partisan lean formula, 2016 presidential election results are weighted 50 percent, 2012 presidential election results are weighted 25 percent and results from elections for the state legislature are weighted 25 percent.

The district is situated between Jacksonville at one end and Tallahassee over 150 miles away at the other.

She lost a general election for state Senate in 2010, the primary in Arizona’s 9th District in 2012, the general election in the 9th District in 2014 and the primary in the 1st District in 2016.